Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [221]
IRS Commissioner Walters personally tried to determine if Hughes was alive, with no definitive results.
In fact, Hughes was just barely alive, and not master of anything, not even his own empire. His money was disappearing at an alarming rate. Under the new command, corporate losses soared above $100 million in five years, and over the previous decade half a billion in cash and securities had vanished from his bank accounts, apparently the result of mismanagement and waste rather than any conspiracy.
Hughes was oblivious to the loss. He could not even control the name of his empire. Back in 1972 it had been changed without his knowledge to Summa, after he was forced to sell off the foundation of his fortune, the business his father had bequeathed to him, the Hughes Tool Company. Pressured by his lawyers and executives, he reluctantly sold his birthright for $150 million to satisfy the TWA judgment, then watched the stock triple while the TWA case was dismissed.
And now, two years later, he discovered his empire had a new name. “Do you see any reason why we cannot change the name Summa to HRH Properties at the end of this year?” he asked. “Can we change the name Summa now?” he inquired again, and on another occasion instructed, “Don’t spend any more money on the name Summa.” But the name was never changed.
There were even problems with his drug supply. Hughes was convinced that the Mormons were withholding his blue bombers.
“Of course no one wants you to take any but we don’t try to keep them away,” soothed an aide. “When you use words and phrases such as ‘putting you to sleep,’ ‘permitting you to go to sleep,’ etc. you imply that we have some kind of control over what you or your mind tells you to do.”
Actually, the Mormons were firmly in control. Sullen and resentful after fifteen years of servitude, forced to perform absurd and odious tasks, they pressed their dependent boss for ever greater salaries, and while each was paid more than $100,000 a year, they still often treated him with contempt.
“If you knew how much it disturbs me, and how unhappy it makes me when you are completely cold and unfriendly as you were tonight, I really dont think you would turn on the punishment outlet quite all the way,” Hughes pleaded in a note to a nursemaid.
“So, all I ask is that the next time you get ready to give me a really harsh expression of your views, you merely take into account the fact that my life is not quite the total ‘bed of roses’ that I sometimes get the impression you think it is.
“In fact, if we were to swap places in life, I would be willing to bet you would be asking me to permit you to re-swap back to the present position before the passage of the first week.”
Hughes had only one last hold over his nursemaids and executives—his will. He had been dangling it in front of them for years, repeatedly assuring them they were all well rewarded, but never letting anyone see it.
“I have had in existance for some time a holographic will,” he claimed. “It was carefully written seated at a desk, complying to all the rules governing such wills. It was all done under the supervision of my personal attorney Neil McCarthy, and I assure you no detail was overlooked. It is as binding as a band of steel.”
The aides were suspicious. McCarthy was long dead, and the will Hughes claimed to have written was supposedly drafted in the early 1940s, a decade before he assembled his strange crew of Mormons.
“I am sure you dont need this protection,” Hughes told them, “as everybody knows that the five of you have been my eyes, ears, and voice for the past five to ten years, so I am sure any one of you could get any exec, position you might care to seek, and with any number of companies to choose from.
“However, as added protection, I have written a codicil to my will which will be delivered to the B. of A. [Bank of America], my trustee in the administration of